The bag feels light, almost weightless as I bustle through the station en route to missing my train. I'll miss my train because I can no longer control the whirlwind, because the tiger I'm riding cannot change its stripes. Missing this train took a minute of ill-preparedness which took a day of muddled thinking which has taken weeks of bi-directional candle-burning. And I won't miss this train because, for now, the tiger loves me and wants me to be happy. It carries me to the ticket barrier and we bound through. It smiles its Cheshire Cat smile at the staff who whisk me past the queue. It settles me in my seat with such silken grace as to make all this seem so easy, so inevitable that a greater romantic than I (and that is no mean feat) would cry 'destiny!' But the tiger just smiles. And if I've manifested away the rough edges of my chosen course and sworn there are no rocks below the lovely smoothness of this water then I have also pressed my wet finger to th
Day 92 - Vinh Even in the most nihilistic recesses of a life lived under a 'light-touch' regulation of desire I struggle to justify the decision to ride with a steepling hangover. Not only because it increases the likelihood of death but also because it makes the time leading up to that death also feel like death. Not for me the rat-a-tat of Bonnie and Clyde's defiant end nor the Thelma and Louise weightlessness of being beyond reach. I haven't named the bike so I can't even meet my surely imminent demise was a plus one. Not that the bike would die of course, just look at the speedo. They'd pick it up, the police perhaps if they could spare a second from grift but more likely the locals, and it would be dusted off and back on the road in a day or two. Me they'd sluice into the gutter like they were shopkeepers cleaning their shopfronts, which they could be. To die on day two of this epic journey would make it look like a foolish idea and I can't have pe